


The Best Things

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: Miss Saigon - Schönberg/Boublil/Maltby
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:12:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3191432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"“You won’t believe all the things you see! I know ‘cause you’ll see them all with me…” Chris keeps his promise, and Kim has some...interesting...encounters with things in America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff. Pure, outright, unashamed fluff. Will be updated sporadically. If you have any prompts, please drop me a line, I'd be happy to use them! :)

1 - **Shower**

_One months after arrival_

“And this is the en-suite bathroom…” the seller drones on, opening the door which glides smoothly across hardwood floorboards. “Beautiful views down the garden, décor matches the master bedroom…”

“Alright, that’s fine, thanks,” Chris has almost had enough of the dreary, soporific voice, the spiel that he’s sure the seller has used on several potential buyers. He wonders if that’s what drove them away. “Can we have a moment?”

The seller nods, and disappears into the squeaky-clean little kitchen, and Chris turns to Kim, smiling at the look on her face, the absolute wonder that she struggles to disguise, even after more than a month in America. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s lovely,” she says in halting American, before switching back to Vietnamese. “I really like it.”

“Then we’ll have it,” Chris declares, and has the satisfaction of watching the smile spread across her face before she leans up on her tip-toes like a bird about to take flight and kisses him soundly.

\-------

A few days after they move in, he finds her sitting in the bathroom staring at the shower. He leans against the doorway, not sure whether to be amused or worried by this behaviour – he should have realised she’d never seen one before, not in his mother’s house where she still used the old bathtub that he detested as a child, and certainly not back in the poverty-stricken warzone of Vietnam.

“Kim?”

“What did you say this was again?”

He doesn’t know the word in Vietnamese. “Shower,” he says. She mouths the word, letting it trip off her tongue.

“Shower. _Shower._ What does it do?”

“Same as a bathtub. Look, I’ll show you.”

He pulls her gently to her feet and opens the door, making sure the temperature is resting firmly on red before switching it on. Warm water cascades down them with a fast swoosh. Kim shrieks with shocked laughter, and tries to pull away, but he keeps his arms around her, holding them both under the showerhead until they’re quite soaked and giggling like little children.

“What do you think?”

She smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling like a concertina of paper. “I love America.”

“I know.”

“I love you more, though.”

He smiles. “Well, come here and give me a kiss, then.”


	2. Food

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is written to the prompt 'American food' from CyanoScarlet, thank you! Just a little note to do with the language difference, I feel that Chris will know a fair amount of Vietnamese having worked for the Embassy, and he's slowly teaching Kim English. Or American.

**II – Food**

_Two days after arrival._

“Where are we?”

Chris tosses the car keys up and down, a jangling of silver against the thin blue air. “Supermarket.”

“Supermarket?”

“It’s where Americans buy food.”

“Why is it ‘super’, though? What about just a market?”

“It’s not stalls, like a market, it’s everything all in one place.” He doesn’t really know how else to describe it. “Come on, it’s probably best to see it.”

He will never forget the look on Kim’s face as they push open the doors and step inside to the general hustle and bustle of a supermarket on a Saturday morning, mothers dragging complaining children around, clueless fathers standing and trying to be helpful, sales assistants with their wide, plastered on smiles. He quickly gets a trolley, and takes Kim’s hand.

She starts, like she’s been knocked out of a reverie, and turns to him with a small, sad smile. “No wonder no-one is hungry in America,” she says. He squeezes her hand, and doesn’t say anything back. He didn’t think of that, not before, but certainly now, being back here after the war, there is a fair degree of how-can-we-have-so-much-when-they-have-nothing rolling around in his thoughts.

“We’d better get on, or we’ll be here all day.”

Kim does find some of her excitement again as they push the trolley through the aisles, as he shows her how he used to use the trolley to glide along the floor as a little boy, the games he used to play with his dad about slipping random and completely meaningless things into the trolley and seeing if his mother would notice. He puts everything that Kim likes the look of in, and by the time they’ve done that and got everything on his mother’s list, queued up and taken everything back to the car, it’s almost lunchtime.

“How do you feel about American fast food?”

“What’s fast food?”

“Very bad for you.”

“If it’s bad for you…”

“It’s like a treat. You shouldn’t have it all the time, but sometimes it’s okay.”

“Okay, then,” she says, and he loves the way the American phrase sounds in her voice, all rounded edges and rolling vowels.

...

It’s heaving at McDonalds, but somehow they manage to find a seat, settle down with a hamburger and chips each. Kim pokes at hers suspiciously, but with a lot of cajoling and several kisses, he finally manages to persuade her to try a bite. She sits there with a blank expression on her face for a second, and then another one of those smiles that he can’t get enough of, the ones that start slowly, as though she’s not sure she’s even allowed to smile, and then beam out from her like light.

There’s a bit of sunlight in her too, he thinks, not just the silvery, serene moon she insists she is.

“I like this.”

“Good. We’ll have to try and sneak some more when Mom’s not looking.”

She laughs, and takes another bite.


	3. English

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, working my way through the list of prompts given by the lovely CyanoScarlet!! Enjoy!! :) (If anyone has any more prompts, please leave a comment, I love hearing from you!). Shameless fluff. Sorry.

**iii. English**

_a few hours after departure._

They sit with a group of men Chris knows from the embassy in the mess hall of the ship, all of whom are sending covert glances towards Kim and the way Chris’ arm never leaves her waist, the way her dark eyes are constantly flickering up to his face as if to seek reassurance. It’s obvious that they’re interested in why the fuck he has a Vietnamese girl with him, and since he’s not going to give them answers and John is sitting hunched over at the other end of the bench, glaring – Chris doesn’t think that John will ever forgive him for running out of the embassy in search of Kim – it’s not a comfortable atmosphere, sitting and feeling the ship pitch and roll on the waves.

As soon as he can, he makes excuses and taking Kim’s free hand in his own, leads her off to the cabin they’ve been assigned, a tiny, cramped little thing that vibrates with the hum of the ship’s engine. “We’re going to have to teach you some English,” he says, after a while of just lying curled up on their bed with her. It’s enough, after what they’ve been through, seeing people screaming and crying at the embassy gates, hearing reports that the Viet Cong were five miles, no, two miles out of the city and he _still couldn’t find Kim._

“English is the language they speak in America, yes?” Kim asks.

“Yes, it is.”

“So…you could tell me some now,” she twists around so they’re nose to nose. “How do you greet people?”

“You say _hello._ ”

“ _Hello,”_ she repeats, smiling. And then again. And again.

“That’s for people you don’t know well. For friends and family, there’s _hi._ ”

“ _Hi._ ”

He kisses her then, kisses her and kisses her and kisses her until they’re both breathless, and she pulls away to ask, “What is that, in English?”

“What is what?”

“This.”

She kisses him again, and when she pulls away, his head is spinning so wildly that he can barely think of the right word. “A _kiss._ That’s a _kiss._ ”

“And what’s this?” she asks, lifting the hem of her skirt.

“ _Skirt.”_

“And this?”

“ _Shirt._ Kim, here? Really?”

She gives him a serious look. “I want to forget. I want to not think of all the people we left behind, so could you teach me more English, please?”

Afterwards, when he’s half-asleep, feeling her heartbeat drumming, light and quick against his fingers, she says, “I hope our children don’t ask me what the first English words I learnt were.”

He chuckles softly. “No, I hope not either.”


	4. iv. Mother-in-law

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one, the last one and the next few are sort of weaving themselves into a bit of a plot, so yeah. Enjoy, comment if you have any more prompts, I'd love to hear from people! :)

**iv. Mother-in-Law**

_Two days after departure_

They arrive back in the US to nothing like the way they went out, all cold almost-summer and quiet, just like when he was back last time, except now, he has Kim’s hand in his and their shared duffel in his other hand and the sunshine making the world beautiful after the smoke and terror and screams of their last night in Saigon.

“So this is America,” Kim says, looking around like she’s trying to take everything in and not quite managing.

“Yep,” he says. “This is America. Look, there’s my mother.”

His mother’s not quite smiling, but the almost-happiness that he’s back, really back for good this time evaporates the second she sees Kim. “Who is this?” she asks sharply as they approach.

“Hi Mom, it’s lovely to see you,” Chris ducks the question.

“Chris, don’t make me repeat myself.”

“Mom, this is Kim. My fiancée.”

“Your what?”

“My fiancée.”

“Hello,” Kim says, just like he taught her. Her fingers crush his. “It is nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“We’ll talk about this at home,” his mother says. “Get into the car.”

...

The house is silent, and his mother turns to face them in the hallway. “Could I possibly have a word with my son?” she asks, her tone tight.

Kim looks up at him, blankly. “She doesn’t speak much English, Mom,” he says. And then, to Kim, “Mom wants a word with me. How about you go and sit in here – we won’t be long.”

“Is everything alright?”

“I’ll tell you later.” She touches his cheek, and nods, disappearing into the door he’d indicated.

His mother is already in the kitchen, crashing glasses onto the table. As he enters, she turns to face him, her hands on her hips. “A fiancée, Chris? Why? Why do you have to undermine everything we’d agreed?”

“We agreed nothing, Mom.”

“You’ll think I’m being unreasonable, but I was aware that we had an understanding that you’d come home when you were ready and marry a nice American girl! I don’t want a Vietnamese whore from Saigon or wherever you were in my family thank you very much!”

“Kim is not a whore,” he says, gritting his teeth. “And I think you’re being very unreasonable.”

“Why? What’s unreasonable about wanting…”

“Mother, listen, okay? Listen, for once in your life. You don’t know what it was like out there – all the terrible things I’ve seen and had to do, and then I met Kim and she was all alone too…”

“You’re not all alone.” His mother recoils, wounded. “You have me.”

“But you don’t know anything about what it was like! Kim does – Kim understands it, and I love her, Mom! Isn’t that enough?”

She doesn’t say anything, but there are tears welling in her eyes. He doesn’t even know what to think but why, why can’t she be happy for him, be there for him like she used to when he was little?

“This is how it’s going to work, okay? Kim and I will find a flat. We’ll be under your roof for a month, tops, and then we’ll be gone and you never have to see us again.”

“I do want to see you again,” she whispers.

“Us. Not you. We’re going to be married, Mom. There’s nothing you can do to avoid it. And if you want to, you’re going to have to accept Kim. For me. Please.”

He turns on his heel and goes.

...

Kim is sitting curled up in one of the armchairs, staring at the TV, the curtains, the carpet. She looks up as he comes in. “I heard shouting,” she says.

“Mom’s not happy about me marrying you.”

“Why?”

“She has this whole preconceived idea of me marrying the nice girl next door or something like that.”

“Chris…”

“I’m not giving you up to make her happy. Not in a million years. She’ll come to terms with it, or she won’t. I don’t care either way.”

Kim stands, comes over to him, tucks herself into his arms. “I think I can understand. But what do you mean, marry?”

“What?”

“We’re already married.”

“Not in the USA we aren’t, I’m afraid. We’ll get all the paperwork sorted, but there are a few things I want to sort out first.”

“Whatever you think is best,” she says, and he kisses her, gently at first and carefully and then harder. She winds her arms around his neck, stands up on tiptoe, enjoying the way their bodies fit together perfectly, the feel of his lips on hers.

A cough breaks them apart. His mother is standing stiffly in the doorway. “I’ve been very rude, Kim,” she says. “My name is Mary-Ann Scott. Welcome to the family.”


	5. v. Clothes-Shopping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to Cyano Scarlet for this prompt - I had quite a bit of fun with it. :) If anyone knows how long it would take a seventeen-year-old to learn English the way Kim would have to if she'd made it out like in this story, please let me know - I've been trying to research, but I'm just not sure!! :)

**v. Clothes-shopping**

_Three days after arrival._

The next morning, Kim is already downstairs with his mother, cups of coffee on the table and a piece of paper on the wood between them.

“Good morning,” he says from behind them. “What’s happening?”

His mother rakes a hand, frustrated, through her blonde curly hair. “I’m trying to explain to Kim the concept of clothes shopping. She can’t go about in that Asian dress or your old clothes for that much longer.”

“Good morning. Mom wants to take you to get some new clothes,” he says in Vietnamese, sitting down in the chair beside Kim and kissing her cheek. Relief flashes across Kim’s face before she hides it.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t work out what she was trying to tell me – it was just a pair of trousers and then a body and…”

Chris starts to laugh. “It’s alright. Mom’s not known for her drawing skills. Did you sleep well?”

It’s the one thing he’s had to concede to his mother – she won’t let them share a room until they’re married, and she won’t budge, no matter what Chris says about nightmares and them needing to be together. It’s not fair, but then he grudgingly admits that sometimes you have to allow unfair things to slide past under the bridge and this is the lesser of two evils.

“Yes, I did. Is it bad that I still don’t like coffee?” she asks, nodding to her still-full cup.

“Yes,” he says, mock-seriously. “It’s an unforgiveable sin, Kim.”

She laughs. His mother is watching with an unfathomable expression, before she suddenly gets up and crashes her mug down onto the sideboard. “Okay, we’re leaving in ten minutes.”

...

Kim doesn’t know what to think of Chris’ mother. Most of the time she’s all sternness and frown-lines, and the next she smiles a little bit and she looks so much like Chris that it’s strange. Kim wishes she’d smile more. They go in the car – Kim is still getting used to this, the soft seat, the neat, clean windows and whizzing smooth, grey roads like they’re flying – and to the centre of a city that’s not all crumbling, seedy buildings and spaces where the bombs landed like the one and only other city she’s ever seen.

They park, and pay, and then she’s following Chris’ mother down a street bustling with people, and in an odd way she misses Saigon so much that it _hurts._ But then she forces herself not to think that. America is a hundred times better than Saigon could ever dream of being, and she should be thankful that she got out.

...

They go into a shop with clothes that are nothing like what she’d expected. If she’d been alone, she wouldn’t have known where to start, but Chris’ mother marches along like a soldier, throwing things into the trolley like there’s no tomorrow. Sets of plain white underwear. Soft white tops with scooped necks. Straight-legged trousers with a coarse, blue feel, like the pair Chris wears every day since they’ve got back without fail, except these are stiffer and bluer than his worn, torn, paint-splodged pair. Then finally, she turns to Kim and says something slowly, as though Kim is an idiot.

“Choose a few things.”

Kim doesn’t understand, laboriously tries to fit the words together. “Could you repeat please?”

“You,” Mary-Ann says, “Choose.” And then points around at the shop.

Kim looks at all the pretty clothes, the short dresses, the things that look like dresses except with trousers on the bottom of them instead of skirts, walks slowly down the aisles, feeling the fabric slide over her fingers and thinking about what Gigi said to her, the night of Kim’s wedding.

_“When you get to America, wear pretty clothes and remember me, once in a while, won’t you?”_

Kim thinks of Gigi. She thinks and thinks and thinks, and then picks a few dresses and some lacy underwear. Somewhere, in Vietnam or from wherever the dead go, she wonders if Gigi is smiling.

...

Back at the house, Mary-Ann helps her choose what to wear – well, more like lays out an outfit on the bed in the guest room and looks at Kim expectantly until she starts to change. It’s strange, being in such a loose dress with a skirt shorter than she’s used, and having her shoulders feel so exposed with her hair swept up on the top of her head, but it’s all worth it for the look on Chris’ face when she knocks shyly on his door.

“I’m not sure,” she says, swishing the skirt a little bit.

He pulls her down onto his lap. “You look beautiful. You always do.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Western clothes suit you.” He presses a kiss to her collarbone. She catches his hand.

“How was your day?”

“Eh, got a few things done. I’ve got to look for a job.”

“What do you want to do, now you’re not in the army anymore?”

“I have no idea – I’ve been having a conversation with John about it, but I don’t know.”

“What are the options?”

“He’s a bit stuck too. We’ve both still got our heads in Vietnam. Perhaps our old CO will have an idea. Oh, I got you something.”

“What? You didn’t have to…”

“Yes, I did.” He reaches over to his bedside table, keeping a warm arm firmly around her waist and pulling a box out of the top drawer. “For you.”

“Can I open it?”

“What, do you think I gave it to you so you could sit and stare at it? Go on.”

The black material over the box is soft-rough against her fingers as she pushes the lid open. She sucks in a shocked breath at the sight that greets her. Chris brushes her cheek. “Do you like it?”

Somehow, she manages to get the words out from behind the tears burning in her eyes and the lump in her throat. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever even held.”

“It’s an engagement ring. It’s what American men give to their girlfriends when they get engaged.”

He picks it up – it glitters in the soft, yellow sunlight, all weaving patterns and sparkling diamond in the middle – and slides it onto the fourth finger of her left hand. “Will you marry me, Lê Xuân Kim?”

She smiles, slowly, and then all at once. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

Just then, there’s the sound of the front door closing and footsteps across the driveway. A car engine starts and pulls away.

“That’ll be Mom,” Chris says, tightening his arms around her and leaning in for a kiss. “We’ll have about an hour.”

“Let me go and get something for you, first,” Kim says, kissing him and disentangling herself. The lace underwear is waiting in her bag, and she just knows, if they were here, all of her sudden, unexpected friends from Dreamland would be proud.


	6. Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment, leave prompts. I'd love to hear from you. :)

**vi. Friends**

_Three weeks after arrival._

“So when do you want me to start talking to the vicar about your wedding?”

Chris looks up from the newspaper at his mother’s voice. Kim shifts beside him, so she can sit up properly – she still gets all flushed when his mother walks in on them sitting in the same chair as though it’s a crime to be caught cuddling. He doesn’t know. Perhaps in her village in Vietnam, it was.

“Mom, do we need to have this conversation now?”

“Yes. It’s been three weeks, and people are starting to ask me when the date is.”

“What’s happening?” Kim asks.

“The date for our wedding.”

“Oh.”

He turns his attention back to his mother. “Kim and I haven’t talked about it yet, that much.”

“But it is going to be in a church?”

“Or a registry office. I don’t know. Kim is Hoa Hao – that’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Kim rests her head on his shoulder.

“It’s got to be in a church – we’re Christian, and there’s no Hoa Hoa people here.”

“Hoa Hao, Mom. I’ll talk to Kim about it later.”

…

“So, this is the question.” They’re walking along the trail next to the river Falls Park where they’ve taken to going to get away from his mother and all the stares and whispers in the neat, smart, conservative suburb where his mother lives. “Mom wants our wedding to be in a church – a Christian wedding – but it’s up to you. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”

“What do you want to do?”

He looks down at her, and she loves the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles. “I just want to marry you and be done with it.”

“I don’t mind having a Christian wedding.”

“You don’t have to bow to my mother’s every wish. She’ll live with it if we don’t.”

“I don’t mind,” Kim shrugs. “We had a ceremony back in Saigon with all of my traditions.”

“I guess. But only if you’re completely sure.”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

…

She eventually gathers up the courage to go out into the front garden by herself one sunny afternoon in late May, when the roses are flinging their petals with wild abandon across the grass, and Chris is out at a job interview for a literary agent in the town centre. It’s a glorious day, all perfect blue sky and the wind whispering softly through the trees, and over by the fence, there are a couple of young women talking, one with a baby on her hip. Kim tries to ignore them, but after a few minutes they start sending pointed glances in her direction, and she hears a few English words being tossed her way, Vietnam and soldier and wedding. They sound dirty in the women’s mouths.

She forces herself to stay out there – she’s in the process of being granted citizenship, she has a visa, she’s getting married to an American – she has every right to sit out on her mother-in-law-to-be’s lawn, enjoying the sunshine without having to do any work. Eventually they go away.

A few minutes later, though, there’s some giggling. Kim opens her eyes and looks over the fence to see the women have been replaced by two girls, both wearing the same clothes and smiling. There’s a lot of elbowing, and then one of them says, “Hi!”

Kim raises her hand awkwardly. “Hello.”

There’s a tirade of English, then, and she’s getting better, she really is, but she doesn’t understand much of what they’re saying. “I don’t speak much English,” she says. One of the girls, with long, blonde hair goes red and then laughs.

“Sorry,” she says, over-pronouncing every letter. Then she smiles, and Kim’s nervous, so nervous to actually be talking to an American person without Chris’ solid, comforting presence at her side, without his easy manner and the way he smiles like they haven’t lived through a war, like they are normal people who just met in the street one day. “I’m Tina. Tina,” she says, pointing to herself.

“Heather,” the other girl says. She’s chewing something in her mouth.

Kim says her own name, clutching the edges of her dress. Why are they even talking to her?

“How old are you?” Tina asks slowly, and Kim desperately grasps at thin air for the answer. Chris has taught her this, she knows he has, ah, that’s what it is.

“I am seventeen.”

The two girls look at each other, saying some more things that she doesn’t understand. She gives them a blank look. “We are too,” Heather says, pointing between them, and back at her. “You’re getting married to Chris Scott, no?”

Chris’ name fills her with relief – she knows that. “Yes.” Gossip spreads fast, obviously, if even the teenagers here know.

There’s the sound of a car, then, and she recognises Chris’ truck, the one with the red splotchy paint and scratched windows that he got second-hand from an old garage just to annoy his mother. He smiles as he sees her, pulling into the driveway and turning the engine off.

Tina says something that sounds like, “Well, see you around” and they start to walk off, identical skirts flapping about their thighs, heads bent together.

“Goodbye!” Kim calls after them, before turning to greet Chris.

He kisses her, gently. “Who was that?”

“Heather and Tina. They stopped to talk with me.”

“That’s nice – I’m pleased to see you’re making friends.”

“I wouldn’t call it that, yet. But they seemed nicer than the other people around here.”

“The other people around here are bigoted asses,” Chris tells her. “Don’t mind them, they’re all very anti-war and anti-foreigner, but they’ve just got to get used to it.”

He kisses her again just to prove his point, and she smiles against his lips. “How was your interview?”

“There aren’t any spaces there, but they’ve got a place for me in their branch in Chicago, if I want it.”

“Chicago? Where is that?”

“About six hundred miles east of here. It’s where John thinks he’s going to settle down.”

“It’s up to you.”

“No, it’s up to us.”

“Do you want the job?”

“I won’t lie, yes, I do. I’ll miss it here, but…”

“Then we’ll go for it.”

…

The next day, Heather and Tina are walking past again, and Kim goes outside to see them. After that, it becomes like a routine, and a couple of weeks later, she invites them into the garden to sit with her and teach her more English. Chris is usually inside, finalising the details for their house in Chicago, but when he goes downstairs to get a drink, he finds his mother standing at the kitchen sink and watching them out of the window as they laugh. Tina, the blonde one, has a bottle of nail varnish resting in the grass, and is painting Kim’s toenails a bright, cherry red.

“It’s good to see her with girls her own age,” she says, quietly.

“I know. I’m pleased she’s making friends, but we’re going to be moving soon.”

“Her English is getting better talking to them. Not that you’re not doing a good job, but…”

“Did you speak to the vicar for us?”

“Yes, I did. If we skip the banns being read, then you can be married in two weeks.”

“Sounds great. Thanks, Mom.”

…

“Will you come to our wedding?” Kim says slowly, trying to remember the way Chris taught her how to say it. Tina and Heather look up from where they’ve been lying on the dry grass, Heather with a schoolbook and Tina waxing lyrical about something that Kim half understands.

“Us?” Tina smiles, all white teeth and wide eyes. “Really?”

Kim nods. Tina gives her a hug. “Thank you, Kim. That’d be amazing.”


End file.
